LARKANA, June 4: The Federation of Traders Association has held the elected representatives responsible for multiplying the problems of Larkana.

In a letter sent to President Asif Ali Zardari on Sunday, secretary-general of the association Dur Mohammed Shaikh said that for four years of the PPP rule, its bastion had been neglected by MNAs and MPAs.

Prolonged power outages ranging to 14 hours, insanitation and ineffective role of the municipal administration and implementation of uplift plans without consultation with traders had created the impression that people of Larkana were orphans, he said.

He appealed to the president for paying personal attention to the city of Benazir Bhutto to resolve its problems.

Meanwhile, the federation in its general body, held under the chairmanship of its president Tarique Nazeer, finalised a schedule of protest against load-shedding. Traders decided to launch the protest from Monday by holding demonstrations, wearing black armbands, holding press conferences and observing token hunger strikes to press for the resolution of the problems.

The meeting regretted that promises and commitments made by the officials of Sukkur Electric Supply Company during meetings with the traders’ bodies remained unfulfilled. The 14-hour loadshedding had disturbed life of the people and severely affected trade activities in Larkana, the meeting said.

The participants demanded that the consumers getting power from the feeders of City-II, Jinnah Bagh, Station road, Allahabad, Industrial and Empire regularly paid bills, therefore, they should be exempted from power outages while loadshedding time on the rest of the feeders should be curtailed to six hours.

The meeting regretted delay in installing conductors of 132KV on the pylons in the area between Shikarpur and Larkana originating from Lodran power grid station for improving power supply and provide alternative source to Larkana. These pylons were fixed years ago.

The existing 66 KV gird station should immediately be upgraded while the remaining work on new 132 KV grid station should be completed, it demanded.